New official data from the ONS released today add a further 730 non-Covid excess deaths in England and Wales to the total of the last five weeks, bringing the figure to 4,964. This means nearly 5,000 more people than usual have died in England and Wales in the last five weeks of causes other than COVID-19.

The total deaths in the most recent week were 10.1% above the five-year average, as depicted in the chart below. The chart shows in blue that Covid deaths account for less than half of the excess deaths this week, though note that the chart over-counts Covid deaths as it includes any death with Covid. The 4,964 figure for non-Covid excess deaths quoted above is calculated using deaths due to Covid, i.e., where Covid is recorded as the underlying cause on the death certificate.

💬 The Australian Regulator expects doctors to refrain from espousing views - including even when publishing papers - consistent with evidence-based material if it's not consistent with public messaging.

Healthy young people now dying en masse across Australia (Natural News)

Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakusic has lashed out at the EU’s foreign and defense policies, arguing that the bloc has become subservient to Washington. Kolakusic is an outspoken critic of the West’s anti-Russia sanctions and of Covid-19 restrictions. Speaking in front of the EU Parliament last week, Kolakusic told his fellow parliamentarians that...

💬 “EU foreign, defense, and security policy today can be described in just one sentence.” “The European Union became the 51st federal state of the United States, but without the right to vote.”

💬 “It is an incredible lie and hypocrisy that the sanctions against Russia and a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas are sanctions against Russia. The sanctions are directed at 500 million citizens of the European Union and millions of citizens of the rest of Europe,” he claimed in May.

Kolakusic has also called world leaders in Europe and beyond “sociopaths and psychopaths” over their Covid-19 restrictions and called Canada a “quasi-liberal … dictatorship of the worst kind” to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s face.

Ukrainian Troops Target Donetsk Using 20 Grad Rockets, DPR Says (Sputnik)
France supplies Ukraine with banned cluster munitions it is supposed to have destroyed (Donbass Insider)

Starting in April, dangerous rhetoric related to regional nuclear aspirations began coming out of Poland - apparently directed as a 'threat' to Russia amid the invasion of Ukraine. Early that month, for example, ruling Polish party leader, Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski suggested that a "tougher" anti-Russian defense posture would include Poland being "open" to having nuclear weapons stationed in the country. But this weekend has seen the rhetoric heighten even further, eliciting a fierce response from Moscow, when Poland's European Parliament Deputy and former Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski suggested that the West give nukes to Kiev. "The West has the right to give Ukraine nuclear warheads so that it can protect its independence," Sikorski said according to regional sources.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that the US-led alliance aims to strengthen Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table, but added that any peace deal would involve compromises, including of territory. Stoltenberg spoke at the Kultaranta Talks in Finland, following a meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. While the NATO chief said that the West was willing to “pay a price” to strengthen the Ukrainian military, Kiev will have to make some territorial concessions to Moscow in order to end the current conflict. The secretary general did not directly endorse the ceding of Ukrainian territory, but he did bring up the example of Finland, which gave up Karelia to the Soviet Union as part of a peace deal during the Second World War.